I have a media tile that is a GIF of a radar loop that updates every 15min …
On web page load it works fine, but when it it comes time to refresh the image, it goes blank, like the gif has been removed from the server. But when (in Chrome) I “inspect element” the image URL has a long, random-looking string appended to it … which is not valid, hence the missing image graphic.
Any thoughts on why this is happening, or how to deal with it?
(I know I should past an example of the string, but kind of in a rush this sec … will update a little later on)
The image refresh appends a unique ID as a query string parameter as a cache busting technique. Most servers simply ignore these addition parameters, but it looks like AccuWeather doesn’t like them.
I’m away from keyboard at the moment, but I can share some other radar loops which work well when periodically refreshed when I get back to a PC.
ahh, ok. Thanks. That’s a shame on Accuweather’s part then.
iirc CNN has some I could try out [Edit: Nah, just statewide, AW has city, state, country maps that really work well for my tastes, might be tricky to replace]
I’ll skim the forums further, perhaps there are threads where folks discuss favorites etc.
I’ll play with that source a bit next week too. I wonder if I could make the cache buster an optional switch. It depends on how their server sends cache headers about the image though… if they don’t send the proper headers then without a cache buster your browser would just load the image from its local cache.
